Margaret Matthews is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Assumption University. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory University and her B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis. Before joining Assumption, she held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University. Her research focuses on early modern philosophy, particularly the intersections of epistemology and social and political philosophy. Her dissertation examined skepticism and its implications for tolerance in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Her current book project explores the epistemology of Gabrielle Suchon, a seventeenth-century feminist philosopher, and examines the implications of Suchon’s theory of knowledge for questions of human equality. At Assumption, she serves as faculty advisor to Phi Sigma Tau and the student-run Philosophy Club.
Education Background
Ph.D., Philosophy, Emory University, 2020
Visiting Graduate Researcher, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 2019
Visiting Graduate Researcher, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III, 2018
B.A., Liberal Arts, St. John’s College Annapolis, 2014
Courses Taught
PHI 341: How Do We Know?
PHI 360: Early Modern Philosophy
PHI 151: Ethics and the Good Life
PHI 100: Socrates and the Search for Truth
Publications
2026 “Gabrielle Suchon on Women’s Entitlement to the Pursuit of Knowledge.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2026.2732956.
2025 “Gabrielle Suchon’s Theory of Knowledge.” Journal of Modern Philosophy. Vol. 7. https://doi.org/10.25894/jmp.2435.
2024 “Marie de Gournay’s Use of Skeptical Strategies.” In New Voices on Women in the History of Philosophy, ed. Clara Carus, 7-22. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62902-0_2.
2022 “Renaissance Skepticism.” In the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. https://iep.utm.edu/renaissance-skepticism/.
Presentations
Selected Recent Presentations:
2026 “Gabrielle Suchon on Women’s Right to the Pursuit of Knowledge.” Philosophy Department Colloquium, The College of the Holy Cross, Worcester.
2026 “Gabrielle Suchon on Curiosity.” The Dutch Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, University of Groningen, Netherlands; The 16th NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy, Fordham University; and the Traveling Early Modern Philosophy Organization, San Francisco State University.
2025 “Rhetoric, Method, and Genre in Gabrielle Suchon’s Treatise on Ethics and Politics.” New Voices on Women in the History of Philosophy Online Speaker Series on “Female Voices, Media, and Modes of Communication in Theology and Philosophy” hosted by Paderborn University.
2024 “Montaigne and the Modern Pursuit of Happiness.” The LeFrak Forum on Science, Reason, and Modern Democracy, Department of Political Science, Michigan State University.